Scheider earned two Oscar nominations - as best supporting actor in The French Connection in 1971, in which he played the police partner of Gene Hackman, and a best-actor nomination for All That Jazz in 1979, about the life of the director and choreographer Bob Fosse.

But he was best known for playing smalltown police chief Martin Brody in Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark shocker film Jaws. Widely hailed as the movie that started the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, it was the first to earn $100million at the box office.

In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines from Jaws - "You're gonna need a bigger boat" - was voted number 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes.

"I've been fortunate to do what I consider three landmark films," he said in 1986.

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"The French Connection spawned a whole era of the relationship between two policemen, based on an enormous amount of truth about working on the job.

"Jaws was the first big, blockbuster outdoor-adventure film.

"And certainly All That Jazz is not like any old MGM musical. Each one of these films is unique, and I consider myself fortunate to be associated with them."

Richard Dreyfuss, who co-starred with Scheider and Robert Shaw in Jaws, said: "He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call a knockaround actor.

"A knockaround actor to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor and doesn't yell and scream at the fates and does his job and does it as well as he can."

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Born into a working-class family in Orange, New Jersey, Scheider was stricken with rheumatic fever at the age of six. He spent long periods in bed, reading voraciously.

Except for a slight heart murmur, he was pronounced cured at 17.

He acquired his distinctive flat nose in an amateur boxing match.

He spent three years in the air force before becoming a theatre actor in New York in the early Sixtiesand then moving into films, making a breakthrough in 1971 as Jane Fonda's pimp in Klute.

He also appeared in Marathon Man as Dustin Hoffman's brother, in Naked Lunch - David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel - and in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker.

He reprised his role as Amity police chief Brody in the less successful Jaws 2 in 1978.

Although Jaws is credited with frightening some filmgoers out of the water for years, Scheider considered his role rather comedic.

"If you go back and look at the way it's developed and built, that is really a funny character," he said.

"He's a fumbler with all kinds of inhibitions and fears - that's the way we built that character."

Scheider was also a political campaigner, particularly against the Iraq war. He was married twice and is survived by three children.